


Something Completely New

by thesilverarrow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When he holds out his hand, she takes it. That's always how it starts.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Completely New

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between series 7 episodes "Hide" and "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" – no spoilers beyond that.

When he holds out his hand, she takes it. That's always how it starts.

The walk is long, over loose and shifting black sands. By the time they reach the sea, red and dark as a fine wine, her legs ache and the wind has whipped her hair into knots. Before they walk down to an isolated stretch of beach, between the hulking rocks, earthy and smooth where she expected them to be forbidding and jagged, she stops and takes her hand back -- just for a moment -- so she can roll her hair into a bun, knot it into itself. 

It's nice but maybe a bit precarious to be clinging to him as they try to find their footing along a brush-covered, switchback path, down and down. Everything on this planet is so very alive, even if it's hard to see it that way. Despite the dryness of the air and the evident lack of rain, scraggly bushes grow up everywhere. It's helpful -- as dark as everything is, she wouldn't be able to see her way to walk if it weren't for the cool white moonlight glancing off everything, including the ocean.

It suddenly occurs to her that she's never seen a moon like this anywhere else but home.

When they reach the bottom, she asks, "Is this…earth?" 

"Will be."

"Is it safe?"

He's not looking at her, so his words are almost lost on the wind:

"Safe enough."

That's always how it starts, too.

*

They sit for a while on the beach, the rocks behind them forming a shield around them, blocking out their view of everything but the water and the dark horizon above it. She mainly looks at her hands, though, watching them practically glow in the moonlight.

He's quiet, so quiet the rush of gentle waves over sand begins to sound like a desperate roar.

"To you, I'm an alien," he finally says, his voice dropping heavy into the silence.

"I guess so."

"The thing is, I've been around you all for so long, you don't seem alien to me anymore. Until I bring you to a place like this."

"Why are we here?"

"It's where I go."

"Okay."

"When I need to think, I mean."

"Should I…?" 

She nods her head back toward the path, but he reaches out and takes her hand again, trapping it between his own and his knee. For all the world, he's like the first boy she kissed, working up his courage to do something frighteningly new but, ultimately, simple. 

Of course, it's possible she's the one feeling a bit nervous, hyper aware of his fidgeting body (how for once he's trying to suppress all that manic energy) and her own shallow breathing. Now, they're not running from something, running to something, running at all.

"I've never brought another living soul here," he says.

"No?"

"Now I know why, of course. It seems rather…barren to you, I expect."

"It's…" 

Her face screws up into an apology.

"I know what it is," he replies, smiling for a moment. "Or I can imagine."

He's not looking at her. That makes her even more nervous than his silence. Impulsively, she stretches her fingers, and when he makes a motion to let her hand go, she instead threads her fingers through his and squeezes.

"I was actually thinking that it's beautiful," she says. "But…relaxing? Not so much."

"It's close," he says. "I have enough of infinity and unbounded space. Sometimes, I want to feel…"

"Safe?"

"Not precisely," he says, and his mouth turns up into a weary smile. Then it brightens a bit as he turns to her and adds, "If that were what I wanted, I wouldn't have needed to leave the TARDIS. Or you."

"And you haven't left me."

"So I haven't."

*

She lets him settle again into silence, but only until she's good and sick of it. When should couldn't sit still any longer if she tried, she gives his hand a tug -- he doesn't let go – and, impulsively, turns and throws her legs over his lap, waits for his wide-eyed reaction.

He starts to speak, but she presses a finger to his lips.

"Decide now: are we here to mope, or are we here to soak in whatever it is that you get out of this place? Because I'm absolutely on board with moping. I know just the right flavors of ice cream, and I have a lot of whiny folk music on my iPod. But you have to commit to it. Are you committed to moping?"

"No, I am not," he replies, displaying that weary smile again.

"What did you bring me for, then?"

"I don't know." His face does that half-sheepish grimacing thing. "Women like beaches?"

"Now whose pants are on fire."

"I just…" He sighs again, and she can't stand it anymore.

"Up!" she says, poking him in the ribs. She's on her feet and dusting herself off before he can react.

Once they've climbed back up from the little cove, him following on her heels as she marches forward, she stops so abruptly he almost steps on her. 

Surveying that forbidding shoreline, she asks, "Is there anything in the water that will hurt me?"

"You mean beasties?"

"Or whatever kind of nasty amoebas and things live in water that color."

"Just a lot of red algae."

"So I'm safe to take a dip?"

He looks a little horrified, but he replies, "If that's what you—"

"Good," she says. She's already pulling her shoes off. "It's been forever since I went skinnydipping."

The look on his face is priceless. Even after she assures him she has no desire to get _that_ up close and personal with so much red algae, especially in the middle of the night, he keeps looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid to do more than peek at her as she plants her feet on cool sand and makes her way toward the water line. 

But when she holds out her hand to him, he takes it, and he does not let go.

*

In the end, she convinces him to take off his shoes, too. His feet look like normal feet.

"You really have two hearts?" she asks.

"Yes."

"But, somehow, you're still not that alien to me."

"You haven't known me long enough," he says with a dark frown, turning his head away from her and squinting against the wind in his eyes.

"Does that kind of thing actually work on people?"

"What kind of thing?"

"The dark-and-broody, rebel-without-a-cause thing? Everyone's got a story, and a lot of them are filled with things they wish hadn't happened. Using the past as a shield is a silly way to live."

"Even if the shield is not for _my_ benefit?"

"Even if."

The tide brings the water just high enough to cover her ankles. Her calves are already itchy from the salt. She feels a bit windblown, dried out, yet she wouldn't be anywhere else, not for all the world, all the universe. 

"I was serious," he says, "about you not knowing me well enough yet."

"I was serious when I accused you of deliberately cultivating this dark and broody persona of yours. It's real enough, I know. By the way, I thank you for believing I can deal with it, with you like this."

"I don't get like this very often."

"That's rubbish. You're like this all the time. It's just that you pretend that you're not, and nobody bothers to call you on it."

"Oh, plenty of people have called me on it."

"How many of them have you brought to your secret tree fort?"

"No girls allowed," he murmurs, tugging her forward again.

"Except me."

"Except you. Apparently."

*

A half hour or so later, after a lot of quiet strolling, they're standing looking out over the water, so far from the TARDIS that she almost can't see it. The water comes and goes in a rush over her feet, and she can't make herself move.

"I hurt your feelings, didn't I?" she asks him.

"I'm quite sure you're not the first person to call me dark and broody."

"No. Before. When we were in the disco decade, ghost hunting. I said you were scary."

He nods his head and says, quietly, "That everyone is a ghost to me."

"Ah. I thought so."

"You didn't hurt my feelings. You just made me think, is all."

"Well, I _think_ you brought me here to tell me what you think."

"About you being a ghost?"

"About me finding you alien and monstrous."

"You don't find me monstrous."

"No, I don't. I never could. Scary, sometimes, but not monstrous."

"To be honest, I don't know why I brought you to this place. I didn't even know that I had until we were already here. Then I thought it was just to tell you that, no, you're not ghosts to me. But you are."

"Okay."

"But you'd have to know what ghosts mean to me. Being able to step outside of time means everything's always happening at once. Yeah, sometimes, you're dead. But sometimes you're learning to ride a bicycle. And sometimes you're growing old, teaching your granddaughter how to ride a bicycle. I love the fact that, for me, you all never die. If that means you also always die, then I have to accept that, too."

"Sometimes, my mother is alive?"

"Yes."

"And, sometimes, I'm alive with her."

"Yes. But you can't dwell on that. It's just an undercurrent, like this tide dragging the water back into the ocean. You asked me how I could just bounce around all over time, watch earth be born and live and die? I live in the moment. Moments are all I have, all any of us have, really."

"So why are we wasting this one with thinking too much?"

"I just want you to understand me."

"I do."

He makes a kind but clearly skeptical face.

So she says, "Where we are, you said it's earth, or it will be, yeah?"

He nods, but his head is already tilting with curiosity. 

"It's our future," she says, "but I bet it's also our past. This is the end of an era, isn't it? A moment of great biological overhaul before something completely new?"

His smile was slow but bright. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, first on the back and then on the palm. 

"You know," he murmurs, " _you_ scare _me_. Just a little."

"Why?"

"You always come at me with a million questions, but you'd get along fine without the answers. And, when I open my mouth, I can't stop it from…" He raises his eyes to the sky for a moment and mutters. "You undo me, Clara."

"You could use some undoing," she replies, tugging playfully at his bowtie, looking at his clothes rather than his very earnest face. 

They walk back without touching. It seems they don't need to.

*

When they reach the TARDIS, the Doctor stops at the door to take a long, sweeping look over the beach and the dark dunes separating it from God knows what.

She's caught up in looking, too, and in feeling the place in a whole different way than when she first saw this panorama.

She says, "I know what you mean about it being…cozy. Even though there's not a single soul on this planet, is there?"

"Not anymore. Or not yet. Just us."

"I like it here."

"I'm glad."

She's about to take her weight off the TARDIS door and slip inside when he turns and steps in front of her. She thinks he's going to wrap her in one of his short but desperate hugs or maybe just push a stray lock of hair behind her ear, quick like she won't notice he's looking so closely at her face. But instead, he wraps his hand around the back of her neck until he's cradling her head at the nape. 

When he leans in to kiss her, she takes a shallow, gasping breath, but he does it anyway.

His lips are as dry as hers, but his mouth is warm and soft, and he kisses her carefully, like he's been thinking about it a long time. Yet he also kisses her like he's not sure why he's doing it -- this way, now, at all.

When it's clear he means to pull away, she grabs him by the lapels of his coat and holds him there, his forehead resting against hers. She feels a bit wobbly, and her heartbeat roars in her ears, louder than the sound of the sea. His mouth hovers near hers, like he won't press for more but he can't break away. She can smell the salt on his skin, and she wants to taste it on his lips again.

"Clara, we probably shouldn't be--"

"You," she says with a sigh, then she pushes up on her toes so she can press a lingering kiss to his neck.

Instantly, he shivers. "Me," he replies, baring his neck for more.

"Really, Doctor" she says in his ear, "you can't mean to be such a tease."

He throws back his head and laughs -- but not too long, because he leans in again, this time bending his head to lightly kiss her on the neck, then, quickly, on the collarbone.

He whispers in her ear, "I can, and I am." Pulling back, he gives her a grin somehow sheepish and mischievous at the same time. "Or so I've been told."

"Well, I'm not very patient."

"Good for you," he says, then he leans in closer and kisses her again. 

It's not long before she's clutching him closer, kissing him more deeply, and it's not long after that before he's pressing her back against the door with those narrow hips, his mouth at her throat, his hands tangled into her hair.

"You know," he says, breath hot on her neck, "I may be a tease, but I seem to recall someone threatening to go skinnydipping…"

"Oh, I don't threaten," she says. 

"You promise, don't you?" he says, nipping at her neck. "Promise?"

There, she thinks. There he is.

"Promise," she says, then she captures his mouth in a long kiss.

And this is how it starts.


End file.
